Return of Turkey Purge

Socyermom Records and the Launchpad have spewed out a Turkey Purge every year since 2000. The carnival of distended stomachs, local rock music and hooch is nothing short of a pair of open arms for freaked-out scenesters to come running to after Thanksgiving. Your uncle was a creep? Blast the sound of his god-awful voice out of your eardrums. The turkey gave you gas? This booze will kill any harmful bacteria left in your system. You're fat? ... Aren't we all?

House shows do it for the love of music

By Maren Tarro

I trekked down a gravel road in Mesilla, near Las Cruces. Navigating the backstreet past rundown trailers inhabited by rough-looking junkyard dogs, I did my best to avoid sliding into three-foot ditches on either side of the narrow dirt path. I was searching for a music venue known simply as The Farm.

Spiting the industry one growl at a time

By Simon McCormack

When you listen to a Rat City Riot track, you might think singer Noah Bricker just choked down a handful of glass shards. In fact, his sandpaper vocals (similar to Dicky Barrett's of The Mighty Mighty Bosstones) are the result of haphazard fine-tuning.

A groundbreaking dissertation diagnoses metal healthy

By Zak Schlegel

If you've ever been to a metal show in Albuquerque, you're well aware of how rowdy fans can get, particularly the adolescent herd. But since the tragic Columbine High School shootings of April 20, 1999, there's been plenty of speculation about whether or not metal music is actually damaging our kids. Gerald Chavez is a musician, chief instructor ofan Albuquerque martial arts studio and clinical psychology Ph.D. candidate of Fielding Graduate University in Santa Barbara, Calif. He wanted to go further into the mind of heshers, so for his doctoral thesis, he devised a study to examine the negative stereotypes that have been thrust upon the metal music community, using Albuquerque as his research base.

As hard as it is to admit, mostly because the band is targeted at prepubescent girls and its lead singer looks like a prepubescent girl, I have a soft spot for The Killers. Still, this collection of b-sides, intended to keep fans satiated until the next studio album, proves what followers of the band have known all along: When The Killers try to go epic, it falls flat on its makeup-caked face. When The Killers keeps it simple, and under three minutes, it does a mean Brit-pop impersonation that's hard to hate. (SM)